Godstone.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
GODSTONE AND BLETCHINGLEY
The White Hart at Godstone.—Cobbett's violets.—Bletchingley.—Beagles and Foxhounds.—Dr. Nathaniel Harris.—Begging the Love of Neighbours.—A gratious woman.—Swift and a gentle prelate.—Bletchingley manor.—The Master of the Revels.—An English gentleman's Armour.—How to be buried.—Posing for a tombstone.—Nutfield.—Fuller's earth and its new uses.
The key to the east of Surrey is Godstone. It is true that the village itself lies more than two miles from the railway station which bears its name, but which might equally well have been named Tandridge or Crowhurst. But there is no other centre in East Surrey from which so many other villages and places of interest are easily reached. To the west, a mile and a-half away, lies Bletchingley, and another mile beyond that, Nutfield, which has not yet been absorbed by Redhill, and, indeed, belongs to Surrey country as surely as Redhill belongs to the railway and the town. To the north are Caterham and Chaldon, and Woldingham and Warlingham; Tandridge is two miles away, Oxted a little more, and Limpsfield not quite four; north of Limpsfield is Titsey, and east of Limpsfield and Titsey is the Kent border. Crowhurst lies to the south-east, and beyond that Lingfield; but Lingfield is almost Sussex, and is perhaps a little too far for a walk from Godstone; it is best reached by rail.
Godstone begins hospitably, at least to the traveller from the south, with three old inns, the Bell, the Rose and Crown, and the old White Hart, now the Clayton Arms. The Bell and the Rose and Crown have not, I think, won any particular place in history; probably they were always a little overshadowed by the spacious frontage of the old White Hart. The Rose and Crown, for all that, displays an imposing board setting out the numbers and the addresses of the many cycling clubs who have made it their country headquarters—doubtless it has been the first stage of many happy, dusty journeys. But the old White Hart has its place in the classical country books. Cobbett often lunched there, and probably the inn-parlour where he had his bread and bacon is very much the same as when he wrote of the village in Rural Rides. Perhaps the rooms upstairs hold more furniture than in the twenties—particularly the fine dining-room with its oak-beamed ceiling, which is as full of furniture as a room can very well be, besides serving various public uses as a place in which audits and meetings are held and county and local account books inspected. In the yard outside, too, although the great vats of the brewhouse are gone, and Renault cars run under the arch which used to echo with the shoes of spanking teams, there can be little changed since Cobbett saw it. He wrote, in 1822:—
"At and near Godstone the gardens are all very neat; and at the Inn, there is a nice garden well-stocked with beautiful flowers in the season. I here saw, last summer, some double violets as large as small pinks, and the lady of the house was kind enough to give me some of the roots."
The garden is still gay and full of flowers; though if I were the landlady I should certainly stock some peculiarly pretty sorts of violets to keep up the tradition—even if she were to find it a little difficult to provide the flowers in bloom in high summer. The village itself has not grown greatly during the past hundred years. Cobbett describes it as "a beautiful village, chiefly of one street, with a fine large green before it, and with a pond in the green." There is not much else to be seen now; the green is as wide and sunny, the geese and ponies graze as contentedly, and the pond is as bright under the chestnut trees and limes. If there has been any very noticeable change, it has been made, perhaps, nearer the church and away towards the railway station, which lie pretty far apart. From the main road by the Clayton Arms there runs a gravel path up to the church, which stands on higher ground, half a mile from the green, and by the path lies a very fine pond, broad and deep, edged with willows and bulrushes, where wild duck swim, and on the far side opening into a shallow bay in which you may watch plovers bathe through the summer afternoons.
The church has not quite the grace and charm of some of its simpler neighbours; but it is interesting as containing a number of monuments to the Evelyns. Church mice are proverbial; but Godstone has a church robin, or had one when I was there in the autumn of 1907. Bread had been placed conveniently for him in one of the windows, and he flew about watching me quietly, and eventually sang a loud solo from beside the organ—cantoris, I think. Outside the church are some of Godstone's newer buildings, the almshouses erected by Mrs. Hunt of Wonham House in memory of her daughter; like the additions to the church, they are the work of Sir Gilbert Scott. Nothing could be more admirable than the repose and solidity of these delightful houses, with their massive oak beams and sturdy red chimneys. Sir Gilbert himself lived for a time at Rokesnest, between Tandridge and Godstone.